Scientific Breakthrough: The Telephone - Term Paper Example

Running head: SCIENTIFIC BREAKTHROUGH: THE TELEPHONE Scientific Breakthrough: The Telephone Name: Institution: Abstract. The telephone is undisputedly one of the inventions which influenced life on earth in incalculable ways. The scientific breakthrough which led to its’ invention may be termed serendipity, but it was the culmination of years of endeavor, coupled in no small measure with inspirational genius. Alexander Graham Bell, fortuitous master of both acoustics and electricity, toiled his way through the harmonic multiple telegraph, universal transceiver and phonautograph before the momentous invention of his ‘Gallows Telephone’ model on the second of June, 1875. This was followed by his invention of the ‘Liquid Transmitter’ on the tenth March, 1876, which carried the memorable words, “Mr. Watson, come here, I want you.” Scientific Breakthrough: The Telephone. In the list of scientific breakthroughs which have transformed the life of man through the ages, the invention of the telephone figures in letters of gold. The word telephone is derived from the Greek words ‘tele’ – from afar and ‘phone’ - voiced sound. While it was the indisputable genius of Alexander Graham Bell which made this miracle possible, the invention of the telephone was but the culmination of a long line of scientific creativity and innovation, pioneered over the decades. The beginning can be traced to 1729, when the English chemist, Stephen Gray, transmitted electricity over a wire. The next step was the discovery of electromagnetism by Christian Oersted in 1820, followed in the next year by Michael Faraday’s discovery of induction. In 1830, Joseph Henry invented an efficient electromagnet and demonstrated the transmission of the first electric signal. Next came Samuel Morse’s path breaking telegraph in 1837. It was Bell’s attempt to refine Morse’s system, so that multiple messages could be transmitted simultaneously over a single wire, which led to his invention of the telephone (Farley, 2006). Alexander Graham Bell was born in Edinburgh, Scotland, on March 3, 1847, into a family of specialists in the mechanism of speech. His grandfather was the inventor of a system to rectify speech disabilities and his father authored a creative sign language called ‘Visible Speech,’ which was the first International phonetic alphabet. The spark of creativity was visible in Bell right from his boyhood, when he built a ‘speaking robot,’ made of gutta-percha and India rubber. Bell was educated at the universities of Edinburgh and London, gathering the rudiments of anatomy, music, electricity and telegraphy but, by training and inclination, was geared to the profession of elocution and the teaching of the deaf-mute: inspired by his father and, perhaps, by the deafness of his mother. As a pianist, Bell perceived that a musical chord struck in one room was echoed by a piano in another room – opening the door to his discovery that chords could be transmitted through the air and vibrate at the other end at exactly the same pitch. This was the basis of his later work on the telegraph. It was this fortunate confluence of Bell’s interest in music, acoustics and electricity, allied to a mind enthusiastically seeking new truths with dogged persistence, which was to make Bell’s name as renowned as his invention in all the world (Inventor of the Week Archive, 2000). Bell’s voyage towards his destiny was hastened by two encounters when he was working as a teacher of elocution in London. The first was his meeting with Alexander J. Ellis, President of the London Philological Society and the translator of Helmholtz’s seminal work, ‘The Sensation of Tone,’ who demonstrated to Bell Helmholtz’s use of electromagnets to set tuning forks in vibration. This set Bell on the path of a ‘musical telegraph’ to transmit simultaneous messages, each at a different pitch. This was Bell’s starting point on the road to his ultimate invention. The second meeting was with Sir Charles Wheatstone, the expert on telegraphy. The renowned scientist impressed the twenty-two year old Bell and ensured that “the grand passion of science became henceforth the master motif of his life” (Casson, n.d. 18). In 1870, Bell’s two brothers died of tuberculosis and the family emigrated to the more salubrious climate of Brentford in Canada. Bell moved to Boston in 1871, where he started a ‘School for Vocal Physiology,’ which consolidated his success as a teacher of deaf-mutes and seemed destined to become his calling in life. He became acquainted with Thomas Sanders, the father of one of his pupils and lived with his family for three years, using their cellar as his laboratory. At this time, Bell was a true creative genius, with wild enthusiasm and intense absorption, but little practical sense. Sanders says, If I noticed any improvements in his machines, he would be delighted. He would leap and whirl around in one of his ‘war-dances’ and then go contented to bed. But if the experiment was a failure, he would go back to his workplace and try a different plan (Casson, n.d., 23). Sanders and Gardiner G. Hubbard, the father of another of Bell’s pupils, Mabel, who was to become his future wife, believed that Bell’s concept of a ‘musical telegraph’ which would transmit several messages simultaneously over a single wire, analogous to the multiple notes of one piano, would translate into a commercially viable enterprise. They agreed to pay the cost of his experiments. However, the telegraph was but obligatory labor for Bell: his passion, ridiculed by Hubbard as a ‘scientific toy,’ was the ‘speaking telegraph,’ a machine that could transmit the human voice. Bell said, “If I can make a deaf-mute talk, I can make iron talk” (Casson, n.d. 30). Bell’s work on the ‘harmonic multiple telegraph’ was based on Helmholtz’s electromagnet interrupting the tuning fork and resonator model, which he continually modified with alternatives like steel plates vibrating over twin electromagnets, substituting clock-spring reeds for the tuning forks and merging the transmitter and the receiver into a ‘ universal transceiver.’ His experiments with reed relays led to the demonstration of the transmission of multiple, distinct tones over a single wire, using a cylinder of bar magnets. This made him comprehend that the vibration of the reed could be translated into electric current, which could be reproduced as sound. The next step was the vibratory circuit breaker. Bell’s abiding interest in a visible speech for the deaf led to his experiments with Koenig’s manometric flame and Scott’s phonautograph. The latters’ resemblance to the anatomy of the human ear led to Bell’s construction of the ‘ear phonautograph’ in 1874 in which, based on a suggestion from his friend, Dr. Clarence J. Blake, Bell incorporated the actual eardrum of a dead man, complete with fragments of the skull and the bones, mounted on a wooden frame!!! When spoken into, the bones vibrated. These vibrations were picked up by a bristle brush in contact with the bones and the shape of the sound waves was traced by the brush on a piece of smoked glass. From the phonautograph was born Bell’s insight that sound could be translated into visible waves, or speech into sinusoidal or undulating waves. In the same year, Bell sketched a ‘harp apparatus’ which he realized could convert the undulating sound waves traced by the phonautograph into an undulating electric current which could be reproduced as sound. Thus Bell reached his innovation of the ‘undulating currents,’ which when combined into a sinusoidal curve, would be different for different combinations of sounds, permitting discrimination among different messages (Gorman, 2005). This was followed by a period of despondency and struggle, as Bell’s sponsors threatened to cut off his funds if he persisted in “wasting his time on ear-toys (of no) financial value”. Hubbard made his permission for Bell to marry Mabel (who Bell loved passionately), conditional to Bell giving up his “foolish telephone” (Casson, n.d. 28). Due to lack of attention, Bell’s school closed and he lost his professorship. Poverty stalked him. He confided in a letter to his mother, “I am now beginning to realize the cares and anxieties of being an inventor … flesh and blood could not stand much longer such a strain as I have had upon me” (Casson, n.d. 29). It was at this juncture that Bell met Professor Joseph Henry of the Smithsonian Institute and demonstrated his findings. In that momentous encounter, the seventy-eight year old Titan of electrical science told the twenty-eight year old Bell, “You are in possession of the germ of a great invention”. Henry countered Bell’s regret of his lack of electrical knowledge with the words, “Get it” (Casson, n.d. 30). This, according to Bell, was the magical phrase which goaded him to ignore all discouragement and continue to pursue his dream. Three months later, we arrive at the defining moment in the history of the telephone: June 2, 1875. Bell and his assistant Watson set up three interconnected multiple telegraph stations, A, B and C, comprising of tuned reed relays to demonstrate how one relay can induce powerful currents in the other. When Bell depressed a telegraph key of a reed in A, the corresponding reed in B vibrated. However, the C relay, in another room with Watson, was stuck. Bell placed his ear against the B relay and asked Watson to pluck the reed in C: Bell heard the pitch and overtones of the plucked reed in the corresponding reed in the B relay. That historic twang of a clock spring announced the birth of one of the greatest inventions of mankind. In the words of Watson, That undulatory has passed through the connecting wire to the distant receiver which, fortunately, was a mechanism which could transform the current back into an extremely faint echo of the sound of the vibrating spring that had generated it, but what was still more fortunate, the right man had that mechanism at his ear during that fleeting moment, and instantly recognized the transcendent importance of that faint sound thus electrically transmitted … The speaking telephone was born at that moment” (Gorman, 2005). June 2 was certainly the ultimate demonstration of the creative insight of a scientific genius, but one must bear in mind that it was years of scientific reasoning, logical thought, painstakingly innovative experiments and the ‘never say die’ perspective which culminated in that moment of scientific breakthrough. It took years of groundwork for Bell’s genius to recognize the significance of that serendipitous error. This experiment resulted in the ‘Gallows Telephone,’ which, despite not working, demonstrated the principles behind the telephone: how mechanical motion is translated into electrical current. Bell’s backers were won over and he now single mindedly pursued the telephone. He submitted his patent for the telephone on February 14, 1876, without a working model, beating Elisha Gray to the finishing line by a few hours. Sustained experimentation led Bell to substitute a dish of water for an electromagnet. This was the ‘Liquid Transmitter,’ which featured in the famous March 10 experiment when ‘the telephone talked’: Watson, in the basement, heard distinctly over the phone, Bell’s words – now indelibly etched in the annals of science – “Mr. Watson, come here, I want you.” Bell received his patent # 174,465, “the most valuable single patent ever issued” in any country (Casson, n.d. 33). However, it needed the attention lavished on the Centennial Model by Emperor Pedro of Brazil and the judges of the Centennial Exhibition at Philadelphia on June 25, 1876 to certify the telephone as “a result of transcendent scientific interest” (Sir William Thomas, cited in Casson, n.d. 40). Alexander Graham Bell married Mabel Hubbard and, along with Sanders and Hubbard, formed the Bell Telephone Company in 1877. Bell’s insatiable curiosity did not let him rest on his laurels until his death on August 2, 1922. He was a founder and President of the National Geographical Society and regent of the Smithsonian. Over the years, he worked with kites, airplanes, tetrahedral structures, sheep-breeding, artificial respiration (precursor of the iron lung), desalination and water distillation, hydrofoil, photophone and audiometer and persisted in his abiding interest in the deaf, developing a life-long friendship with Helen Keller. He even attempted to fashion a ‘telephone probe’ to extract the assassins’ bullet from President Garfield in 1881 (Chronology of Alexander Graham Bell, 2006). His critical reasoning, thinking and creativity made him the consummate scientist, who never gave up the pursuit of knowledge. His approach can best be summed up in his own words: “Leave the beaten path behind occasionally and dive into the woods. Every time you do, you will be certain to find something that you have never seen before” (Inventor of the Week Archive, 2000). References. Akexander Graham Bell National Historic Site of Canada (N.S.). Chronology of Alexander Graham Bell. (1995–2006). Retrieved 22 November, 2006 from http://fortress.uccb.ns.ca/parks/agbchr_e.html Casson, H.N. (n.d.). The History of the Telephone. Retrieved 22 November, 2006 from http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/etcbin/toccer-new2?id Farley, T. (1998-2006). Tom Farley’s Telephone History Series. Privateline.com: Telephone History. Retrieved 22 November, 2006 from http://www.privateline.com/TelephoneHistory/History1.htm Gorman, M.E. (2005). Alexander Graham Bell’s Path to the Telephone. The Telephone History Web Site. Retrieved 22 November, 2006 from http://www.atcaonline.com/phone/hist.html Inventor of the Week Archive. MIT School of Engineering. (2000). Retrieved 22 November, 2006 from http://web.mit.edu/invent/iow/graham_bell.html Read More